Software Installation/Update via Internet Patented

RKBA writes "My wife just handed me an article from the Wednesday, October 22, 2003 issue of the Wall Street Journal about a tiny Austin, TX company called Bluecurrent that has been awarded patent No. 6,636,857 covering the Internet installation of any software or settings on new computers. The patent was granted by the USPTO on October 21, 2003. It will be interesting to see if it can be enforced. I think it's time for someone to file a patent on Earth, Fire, and Water. ;-)"

Comments

It's official

[Anonymous Coward]

It's official. There is no God, the madness will never end. Kill me now.

Re:It's official

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's official. There is no God, the madness will never end. Kill me now.

well, we're gonna have a hard time /.ing you if you don't give us your IP...

It Gets Worse

[John_McKee]

According to the WSJ article, They have already found a law firm willing to pursue the claim for a contingency fee.

"Mr. Thomas said Bluecurrent intends to seek royalties of $10 to $25 for each time a new computer has software or other settings updated over the Web."

Re:It Gets Worse

[BenFranske]

Sounds like trouble for users of Micro$oft's Windows Update. Or for the *NIX users of apt-get and similar utilities. Of course, coming up with prior art should be no problem and the rich Micro$oft will fight this for you.

Re:It Gets Worse

[CrowScape]

If they can enforce it they'll make a mint from all those spam/pr0n sites that try to change your homepage settings when you accidentally visit them.

Re:It Gets Worse

[jeffkjo1]

Oh yea, accidentally, I bet.

Re:It Gets Worse

[Prof.Phreak]

Wouldn't DHCP be "updating settings over the network"???

Re:It Gets Worse

[the_2nd_coming]

false. prior art means that the idea has been in common use for a while.

Apt has been around for a long time. since the mid 90's

this is mot going to be enforceable. I doubt the Patent officer looked farther than his windows machine.

Re:It Gets Worse

[MillionthMonkey]

false. prior art means that the idea has been in common use for a while.

I phrased it badly- I meant "there is no prior art" as far as the USPTO is concerned when they grant the patent. They do a search through their database, and if they don't find anything, they grant the patent and pocket the fees.

Why waste time doing a Google search? It might find something, and then they don't get the fee. If there's unpatented prior art out there, let the courts sort it out!

Re:It Gets Worse

[bahamat]

Actually, the pattent specifically and repeatedly says "World Wide Web". Contrary to popular belief, the WWW is NOT the Internet. The WWW is a subset of the Internet. DHCP would not apply, since it's not part of the WWW. FTP would not apply. NNTP, SCP, UUCP, RCP, SMTP, or any protocol other than HTTP would be outside the scope of this patent.

Also, this patent is only for transferring one's files/settings from one computer to a new computer. Before you all go moaning and groaning, RTFP. This thing is written very specifically. So specifically, I don't see how it could possibly affect any other service currently in place that I am aware of. Of course, IANAL, but it seems to me that this was intended to be so specific to only cover precicely and exactly the service Bluecurrent offers, or whoever wrote it is moronic enough to think that the "World Wide Web" is all there is to the Internet. Either way, I don't think this will ever affect my life again.

Re:It Gets Worse

[waterbear]

The USPTO definition of prior art is a prior patent. If nobody has filed a patent on something, there is no prior art and they consider it patentable.

Nonononono. Wrong bug report. The problem is elsewhere. The USPTO definition of prior art is the same as the one in the US patent code (35 USC sec. 102), and this includes _much_ more than prior patents and non-patent literature. (E.g., prior inventions of other inventors in the USA are also part of the prior art even if not published, but unpublished material is quite hard to bring into the process and hard to prove.) Novelty searches in the patent office could be more thorough than they are, and sometimes are careless. But the examiners do sometimes look at non-patent publications.

The USPTO issues a patent if it doesn't find relevant prior art. This means that a careless USPTO search is likely to result in the issue of a patent with claims that should not be patentable, or at least are too broad.

Currently, there are access-to-justice issues (the law does not yet provide enough, or effective, opportunities for third parties to challenge issued patents). That means correcting mistakes like this is usually an uphill struggle, slow, and likely very expensive. So in the meantime, the beneficiary of the USPTO mistake, the owner of the patent, may be able to cash in on it.

The Federal Trade Commission recently made proposals aimed at correcting these defects of the system. The FTC proposals might or might not go far enough, but either way, between now and possibly getting them adopted, there would be another hard slow struggle ahead for their advocates :( .

But the bug in the system is not the one diagnosed by the parent poster (inadequate definition of prior art)! It lies in either or both of two other places (a) the skill/thoroughness of patent examination before patent issue and (b) lack of proper opportunities to correct mistakes after patent issue.

Wind?

[toeofdestiny]

I think it's time for someone to file a patent on Earth, Fire, and Water. ;-)

Wind is already patented?

RTFA!

[bigHairyDog]

NO! This is *not* a patent "covering the Internet installation of any software or settings on new computers".

This is a patent covering backing up preferences on a remote server so that someone can safely upgrade their OS or move computers.

To recap:

1. We are not all going to die
2. It's all going to be OK
3. Profit!

I wish /.ers would check their facts before screaming how the sky is going to fall on our heads every time the USPTO grants a patent.

Re:RTFA!

[kfg]

Ah yes, patenting ftp and email to store your own files is sooooooooo much better.

KFG

Re:RTFA!

[Josh Booth]

Of course not, you just have to do a quick "rm -rf ~/.*" before you send your home directory to the backup computer. Just remember to "mv ~/.porn ~/porn" before you do that.

Re:RTFA!

[LoadStar]

NO! This is *not* a patent "covering the Internet installation of any software or settings on new computers".

This is a patent covering backing up preferences on a remote server so that someone can safely upgrade their OS or move computers.

Agreed. Reading the patent, one sees that they describe a web-based process where one can access a web page, back up files comprising a user's environment, go to a new workstation, and restore said files.

What they describe is essentially a web-based version of Microsoft's FAST (File And Settings Transfer) Wizard from Windows XP.

Re:RTFA!

[hkmwbz]

The problem is that the patent madness is a hindrance to the development of software. Rather than focus on making good software, companies that want to try to make a living in the software industry has to hire an army of lawyers to make sure they aren't infringing on anyone's patents, or they can ignore it and hope that they aren't, and that no one will find anything and sue them.

Maybe these ridiculous patent applications weaken the patent system, but real companies are having real problems with this today. Maybe a lot of people in the /. crowd work in the software industry, and are therefore concerned about their jobs.

Re:RTFA!

[nomadic]

I wish /.ers would check their facts before screaming how the sky is going to fall on our heads every time the USPTO grants a patent.

It's a catch-22--if they did that, then they wouldn't be /.ers.

RTFA, this patent is quite specific!

[RT Alec]

It looks like this is a bit more specific than the original post would lead one to believe. It does not cover installing software remotely. This patent is more about saving a user's settings remotely, then transferring them to a new computer. Looks like it is a way to facilitate the use of a remote IT staff. It does not look like it covers downloading software install packs, nor does it seem to cover software updates. But hey, IANAL :)

Re:Hehe

[mgs1000]

I'm sure they are just trying to cash in on the fact that IE will automatically try to download the Flash plugin.

Obvious?

[redgopher]

I think it's time for someone to file a patent on Earth, Fire, and Water

With your powers combined, I am Captain Patent!!

Parent correct -- read the abstract!

[jhujoe]

Abstract The method and system of the present invention provides an improved technique for replacing, implementing and managing computer-related assets. A technician accesses the World Wide Web through a user's computer. The information resident on the computer, including information regarding the computer and the user's preferences, are downloaded to a remote storage medium through the World Wide Web. Once downloaded, all information may be removed from the user's computer. Subsequently, the technician accesses another computer such as, for example, a new computer that has been assigned to the same user. The technician accesses the World Wide Web through the new computer and downloads the information previously stored on the remote storage medium. This information can then be used to install the user's prior applications, settings and preferences on the new computer.

As the parent noted, as would anybody who actually took the time to read the patent abstract (which apparently does NOT the original poster), this patent is for using the web as a place to migrate settings and data from one computer to another.

Now, in my opinion, the actual patent is also ridiculous and way too broad in scope, but not nearly as bad as the picture painted by /.

NOT about software updates

[LauraW]

As someone else pointed out, this patent isn't about software updates; it's about preferences and other user settings. You have to read the patent's "Claims" section to know what it covers. They're the only part that really matters.

The scary part of this patent isn't the user settings stuff, it's this claim:

25. A method for asset management using the World Wide Web, comprising:

• accessing the World Wide Web through a series of computer-related hardware devices connected to a network;
• transferring information regarding each computer-related hardware device in said series of computer-related hardware devices to a remote storage medium;
• compiling information related to said series of computer-related hardware devices derived from said information residing on said remote storage medium; and
• preparing and disseminating reports compiled from said information.

This seems to cover cases where every computer on a network (say in a corporate IT environment) uploads a bit of information about itself to a server, and then someone prepares a report based on that information. But there must be prior art on this one. And it would be pretty easy to get around this claim anyway -- just poll the machines for information rather than having them upload it to a central server.

Only covers updates via the "World Wide Web"

[slyfox]

This patent specifically covers using the World Wide Web to update a computer; it does not cover all possible ways to update software via the Internet (the web is just the subset of the internet that uses HTTP and HTML). Thus, if you perform automatic updates without using HTTP or HTML (say, XML and SCP), this patent does not affect you. In essence, this patent is easy to work around, so it should have much of a long-term effect on the world as we know it.

I suspect the only reason this patent was issued was due to this specific nature of the claims; however, in the short-run this pattent still might cause some big headaches if the lawyers get really over eager (which always seems to happen...)

It doesn't seem that broad

[HardCase]

After reading the patent, the claims that are made don't appear to support updating or installing software over the Internet. They do seem to support maintaining a database of system settings that can be updated at a given workstation by a technician, then accessed by the same, or different technician, in order to account for existing user settings and to maintain a list of installed hardware and software so that when a software installation is performed, the technician can rely on this database to make sure that the software is installed to the user's satisfaction. It really seems to me that all that is really claimed is a way to utilize a remote database to maintain records of a particular computer's software and hardware configuration. The things that we write down on paper are now contained in a database. The critical part of the patent appears to be that the database is relational, maintained at a different location from the computer under examination and is accessed via the Internet.

There aren't any claims about installing software or software updates. Perhaps a case could be made that an online software installation/update system that copies a computer's configuration from the computer to a remote system via the Internet could be infringing, but as far as I can tell software installers/updaters simply send an installer program that examines what's on the computer, then requests the appropriate files from the remote server. And it seems to me that that's how it should be done, anyway.

Nonetheless, this still does not seem like anything particularly novel. The idea of maintaining a database of settings is certainly nothing new. Making that database accessible over the Internet doesn't seem like a particularly significant improvement. In fact, what is (critically) missing is automation. The claims that are made in the patent specifically call for the intervention of a technician in the process, to interpret the settings reported from the remote database. Regardless of the novelty of the idea, it doesn't seem to be as broadly applicable as the title of the /. summary makes it appear. I'm sure that the company can try to sue to enforce the patent against others delivering software updates over the Internet, but the claims that the patent makes (at least the novel claims) are so narrow that I don't think that they will enjoy too much success.

And it seems that if anybody wants to look at an existing system that might infringe, Red Hat's RHN system may be just the thing. But I think that it's been around since well before 2002.

-h-

MOD PARENT UP!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

well, we're gonna have a hard time /.ing you if you don't give us your IP...

Very nice pun, in a story about patents :)

yes, you need to know.

[twitter]

But do we really need to have a story every day about every new piece of evidence that the patent system is screwed up?

If you don't care about internet software updating and maintaning that has a database, you don't care about this. That would mean you don't have a system like apt, up2date, ports or any other software version atomation on any of your computers. If that's the case, Slashdot does not have much to offer you and you should point your licensed copy of IE someplace else. If you care about free software, stupid software patents bother you because that's how propriatory software makers intend to kill their competition.